On November 2nd, America enterd what at least 48% of the voters feel will be a long, dark, embattled four year journey. The second term of George W. Bush was something liberals, most moderates, and everyone else who exists in what Ron Suskind called "the reality based world," did not want to happen. Despite our hard work, optimism, and advantage on economic and foreign policy issues it happened. After a few weeks of reflecting on the election, it seems clear that the part of the reason Dubya won was not that a majority of Americans support his favorative and radical economic policies, or his hapless foreign policy, but that most voters are afraid of gay people, think abortion is murder, and believe the bible should be the foundation for our law. In short, we lost the culture war, partly because we refused to even fight it, and as a result lost the election.
It is debatable the extent to which cultural issues decided the 2004 presidental election, but it is undeniable the culture war is the fundamental political issue in American politics. The culture wars define Americans, define the two parties and largely are the issues that most Americans use to symbolically identify with either of the two parties. If the Democratic party is going to win any more national elections, or state elections in swing and red states for that matter, we will have to devise a way to fight the culture wars. Notice, we do not need to win the culture war, but we do need to win some decisive battles. Tactics, strategies, programs, slogans, and ideas need to be created to wear down the decisive edge Republics have in this are and use in order to divide the country and win elections. The way to do this is to find common ground on social issues and exploit the often extreme and out-of-the-mainstream positions Republics take by crafting alternative, positive positions on the same issues. The key to these positions is that they must be acceptable to those who are both uncomfortable with the Democratic Party's current perceived stance on the issue in question, but also feel that the Republican Party sometimes is too far the right, too absolutist, and sometimes too harsh on the issues. In essence we must frame the terms of the debate, but we must also craft positions and initiatives that can effectively peel off some of the Republican's support on cultural issues. Without compromising our core values, we must publicly project a more moderate image and minimize the often damaging spectacles that the far left often employs in its theatrical strategy of startling and jarring confrontation with the ideological middle of America.
As an example, I would like to examine the issue of abortion. Although gay marriage was the issue du jour of this election, abortion is the issue key to the culture war. It is the most symbolically important of all major culture issues and serves to unify the cultural far right like no other issue unites any other faction of U.S. politics. It is an issue on which a surprisingly high number of single-issue voters vote on, and cuts across class, gender, age, education, and ethnic lines. For example, my parents are both single-issue voters who vote only on the issue of abortion. My Mother claims that more lives are lost due to abortion than all of the wars in human history, thus making it a much more important issue than any war could possibly be. (I like to silently reply that she would probably vote for Hitler, as long as he said he was pro-life and was running against a Democrat.) My uncle is also an abortion-only voter. When asked how he was voting in the election he replied that although his union had been calling him everyday trying to get him to vote against Bush, "we can't be killing no babies."
So why do voters believe that Democrats want to kill babies? The answer is simple: because the Republic Party has set the terms of the debate. The debate surrounding abortion boils down to one issue: legality. The debate gets further boiled down to, like everything else, a question of good or bad. By focusing the debate on the legality of abortion the debate becomes a debate, to most voters minds, over whether abortion is `good' or `bad.' Of course Republics think that abortion is bad and by extension Democrats believe abortion is good. But how many Democrats really think abortion is a positive thing. Not many. Most are personally uncomfortable with abortion, but support a women's right to choose because they do not want to enforce their personal moral judgment on others.
By debating whether abortion should exist or not Democrats are also falling into the trap of enabling the Republicans to avoid running a campaign against the Democrats and instead run a campaign against a more clearly `bad' element of society: abortionists and baby-killers.
The tasks the Democrats have before them is to change the term of the debate. The central issue over abortion should no longer be whether it is legal or not, but what is the best way at reducing the number of abortions. Democrats should clearly and loudly advance a program that will cut the number of abortions by one quarter every 4 years. This should not just be announced either, it should be repeated and repeated, thus forcing the Republicans to counter this program with either another program, or by attempting to move the issue back to legality, or into another area such as birth control.
The specifics of the program don't even need to be laid out in detail, but will include sex education, easier access to birth control, and an easing of adoption fees and red-tape. These programs should be packaged together as optional state programs which the federal government will provide funding for, and the states will administer, thus keeping the federal government out of people's business, and allowing states to tweak the program for local conditions.
As any chess player knows, when making a move, we must think three moves ahead. We must consider the opponents move, and already have are next move planned out. As I see it the Republic Party has two options to address this strategy: 1) Dismiss it by simply stating that making abortion illegal will get rid of all abortions, 2) Argue that the program will not work, will cost too much money. A third strategy related to the second is to state that the program will rely excessively on birth control and that the program would amount to encouraging children to have sex.
The first strategy will probably be the initial response by many conservatives, and will also be what hard-core cultural warriors will agree with. This doesn't matter. We are not trying to take these voters away from the Republic Party, but only peel away some of the culturally conservative voters by making them feel comfortable with the Democratic Party and appealing to our similarities as human beings and Americans.
When conservatives dismiss our program by stating that outlawing abortion will end all abortions, we will have two replies. The first will be that outlawing abortions will not end abortions. The outlawing of abortion will have parallels with Prohibition. The rich will still be able to receive safe abortions performed by doctors, just like they did before Roe -v- Wade. Those who are not rich will either have a crank performing abortions with unsanitary equipment, or will resort to a coat-hanger up their body in an alley. The second way to respond to this response is to point out that the conservative strategy of overturning Roe -v- Wade has failed for the past 30 years. Instead of pursuing the failed strategy of attempting to outlaw abortion, we should concentrate on concrete ways to reduce abortions.
When conservatives argue that our program will not work or will cost too much money, we will have succeeded in changing the terms of the debate. Legality of abortions will no longer be the central issue debated, but rather we will have the chance to debate over who can best reduce the number of abortions. This is a debate the Democrats can win. According to Dr. Glen Harold Stassen, abortions consistently declined under President Clinton. Under George W. Bush, however, abortions have been consistently increasing. In 2002 alone 52,000 more abortions were performed than would have been expected in any typical year during the decade of the 1990s.
This strategy of crafting compromise positions that are acceptable to liberals centrists, and even some more moderate conservatives can be applied to many other cultural issues such as gay marriage, gun control, and decency on public airwaves. What is more important than crafting these positions, however, is how the terms of the debate are framed, and how these positions are able to speak to common values that all Americans hold. By reclaiming the cultural center in American politics, Democrats will be more willing and able to move towards the economic and political left, just as the Republicans have moved towards the economic and political right by publicly focusing on their image as cultural centrists.
Please give feedback, I might be adapting this for an essay for a class assignment.